With such an addlebrained--or, to drop the analogy completely, brainless--sorting mechanism choosing which variations succeed or fail, it is no surprise that the evolutionary history of a given structure cannot be determined by analyzing its current manifestation.

She seems to be beaming in from some universe of her own devising, so far inside her character's addlebrained confusion that everything she says often in a slightly slurred accent that suggests George Jessel is funny.

When the card companies describe their targets as subprime customers, the people they're referring to are your near-senile grandmother, your addlebrained teenager and your slow cousin Ed. It isn't people with Ph.D. s who were falling into the snare of two-cycle billing and retroactive interest increases.

But an item from today's The Page helped me to remember that I had deemed Halperin to be worthless not merely on the strength of his constant, addlebrained photoshops, but also because of his knack for taking in the news of the day, missing the nuance, vomiting conventional wisdom in every direction and, ultimately, getting the story precisely wrong.